


Girl's Daemon Tries to Eat Boy's

by Diary



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Bechdel Test Pass, Conversations, Gen, Light Angst, POV Eleanor Shellstrop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21625276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: AU. A look at teenage Eleanor, her daemon, and transfer student Chidi and his. Complete.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	Girl's Daemon Tries to Eat Boy's

Eleanor has felt twitchy all morning, and when Buster finally reappears with his mouth full of some loser’s mouse or rat daemon, the twitchiness doesn’t go away.

Spitting the thing out, Buster declares, “This is Avalon.”

“What sort of stupid name is-”

“I’m standing right here,” the stupidly named daemon declares.

It’d be more effective if she weren’t still shaking uncontrollably.

“Her human, Chidi, is missing,” Buster says. “Can I eat her?”

“What? No!”

God, she swears, she has the worst daemon imaginable. Buster settled into his shape of a bulldog way early (because, yeah, _she_ is a greater follower of authority. At the very least, she should have gotten a Rottweiler or Dobermann or pitbull, not a pug’s only slightly tougher cousin), and even though daemons don’t need to eat, he’s always hungry for something.

“We’re originally from Senegal, but we came here from France,” Avalon says, and she has no idea if the accent is whatever type people from Senegal have or French. “Chidi had a worse than usual stomach-ache, and some human grabbed me before I could follow him to the nurse’s office.”

Well, this poor Chidi dope is going to have way worse than a stomach-ache, she thinks with her own stomach twisting uncomfortably.

Her parents were the sort of scum who’d touch anyone’s daemon without a thought, including hers. When she was a baby, fine, it’s normal for parents to touch their kids daemon’s, but even when she got older and begged them to please, just tell her, she’d get Buster to move, please, it hurt when they kicked him, please, stop trying to give him haircuts and vacuum him, it made her feel all sorts of weird things inside, they rarely listened.

“Alright, we’ll take you to the nurse,” she sighs.

Since she’s skipping English, she’ll probably be caught, and using the excuse she’s just helping some transfer student’s overly-shaky daemon probably won’t fly, because, her stupid permanent record has her history of truancy listed in black-and-white.

She wouldn’t want it to, but she’s noticed facts like she was a kid who couldn’t drive when her parents left her at home or were there but passed out drunk, that her parents dropped her off at the wrong school for almost two months, and that she couldn’t help it that her parents didn’t get her vaccinated despite the fact there was a free clinic in their neighbourhood with this resulting in her having a nasty case of the measles, aren’t in her permanent record.

Avalon twists her paws. “Chidi wouldn’t want someone to trouble themselves on our account.”

“Buster, pick her up. We’re going to the nurse’s office.”

Thankfully, her idiot daemon listens, but when they get near the lockers, a freaking giraffe stampedes through, it probably belongs to that irritating transfer student from her home ec. class who has major sister issues, and dropping Avalon, dumbass Buster gives chase.

Yeah, I’m definitely getting ISS, she glumly thinks.

Getting her purse out of her locker, she checks to make sure none of her weed is still there before kneeling down. “Here, want to ride in this?”

Avalon gives her a soft, wide-eyed look, and she continues, “Hey, don’t make this weird. I’m just hoping your sick human doesn’t get an ambulance called here. They usually come with a police escort.”

“Thank you!” Avalon settles in. “May I ask your name, kind lady?”

“Seriously, never use ‘kind’ to describe me unless it’s something like, ‘She only kind of blew up that mailbox.’ But I’m Eleanor Shellstrop.”

Poking her head out of the purse, Avalon says, “I still appreciate you doing this.”

…

By the time she gets to the nurse’s office, Buster has come back, and it’s good he doesn’t have anymore daemons in his mouth, or she’d kill him.

“That’s suicide,” Buster smugly declares.

“Only if I don’t find a way to not die. There could be people who don’t have daemons.”

“Weird fairytales,” Buster says.

“Or highly kept government secret,” she retorts.

Avalon, she notices with irritation, has lost the twitchy shyness and is looking between them with this look of superiority that makes her tempted to dump the little mouse rat on the floor and step on her.

Instead, she goes inside, and the one person inside the office, a black student around her age lying on the cot, is actually pretty hot in a geeky, boy-next-door way. Slap a pair of postal shorts on him, and he might be private-time-in-the-shower-worthy.

Except, he looks up, and no person with skin that dark should ever have such a noticeable greenish tint to their face.

“Avalon,” he croaks out.

Avalon straight up leaps from her purse onto his chest, and she’s not going to lie, that was awesome.

“Chidi, this ki- not-kind girl is Eleanor, she gave me a ride in her purse, we should invite her and her big daemon to dinner!”

She’s halfway to the door when Buster decides to knock her back, and losing her footing, she spins back around, but at least, she manages to catch herself before she falls.

Chidi looks between her and Buster with confusion and a little bit of niceness. “Um, thank you. For helping Avalon get here. I’m Chidi Anagonye.” Managing to get up, he walks over to offer his hand. “I’m not contagious, by the way, I’m just prone to anxiety-fuelled stomach-aches, and someone grabbing Avalon really didn’t help.”

“Yeah, whatever. You should try to find some medicine or yoga or something to deal with that. I’m leaving now.”

“Wait.” Nothing’s stopping her from leaving, but if he falls, she doesn’t trust that the nurse doesn’t have secret cameras in the room. “I really feel the most ethical thing would be to repay you and your daemon somehow.”

She can’t help but laugh. “Look, dude, this is Arizona, and I’m a trashbag.” Ignoring his confused frown, she barrels on, “Philosophy’s a bunch of old, dead white guys arguing about how everyone should have acted in whatever time they were from.”

“I’m Buster,” said daemon declares.

Chidi nods at Buster. “Nice to meet you, Buster.” Then, to her he says, “Not all of the respected philosophers were old, heterosexual white men. Personally, Kant’s always spoken to me the most, but what’s your philosophical outlook on life? I’m sure, if I haven’t closely studied them, I could. We could compare and contrast.”

“This,” Avalon says, “is our way of asking you to be our friend. We don’t really have any friends here. Besides the lunchlady who gave Chidi an almond milk even though his lunch-card balance was too low, you’re really the only one who’s been nice to us.”

Surprised at the words, she manages to get out, “Hey, I’m not nice, and nothing I do is nice.”

“I’ll be your friend, little rat. Or are you a big mouse? Eleanor never lets us have friends. I promise I won’t try to eat you again.”

She rolls her eyes at the weird, syrupy eyes Buster and Avalon make at one another.

“Avalon’s an Asian garden dormouse. Technically, she’s part of the Rodentia order, but she’s closer to a chimpunk than a mouse or rat.”

This doesn’t really make sense to her, since mouse is literally in Avalon’s animal species name, but it isn’t her concern.

“Look, Eleanor, Buster- My best friend isn’t here, my parents’ marriage is rocky again, and I don’t know how to do anything without making myself feel sick. You’re the first person who hasn’t been pitying or acting as if you’re superior.”

She doesn’t pity him, and the other- no, she already knows this smart boy from some exotic country is better than her, it doesn’t take a philosophy nerd to work that out, but she can definitely get him being so sick of stupid people who think they are better.

“Okay, look,” spotting a sticky pad and pen on the nurse’s desk, she grabs it, “here’s my email address. It’ll probably take me until the weekend to answer any emails you send, but send me one, and if we can connect over email, I’ll see about sitting with you at lunch, okay?”

“Do you know if we have the same lunch period?”

“It doesn’t matter. I pretty much do whatever I want.”

“So, you tend more towards egoist anti-authoritarianism?”

After a few seconds of looking at his eager face, she says, “I’m leaving now. See about emailing me. Buster, let’s go.”

Buster listens.

“I liked them.”

“For some weird reason, you like people in general.”

“They liked us.”

“They might have liked you, but trust me, me and Philosophy are never going to sit together at lunch or even talk in person ever again.”

“Well, I might talk to Avalon,” is the stubborn reply.

She shrugs. “Whatever. I’ve always known you’re a worthless daemon.”

“Well, most humans think you’re worthless.”

She’s known this since she was two and Buster was spending most of his time as a slug.

“At least, I’m trying to get us out of here. You think making friends is the way? They’ll only slow me down. I just need to get enough credits to graduate, and then, I can find a full-time job that will eventually pay more than minimum wage.”

The bell rings, and she doesn’t protest when he jumps in her arms. Moving up against the wall, she walks as if she’s not about to sneak off school campus early again.

He’s really too big for this, but it’s either this or suffer him getting walked on again. Other daemons never warn their humans when he’s underfoot, and humans tend to ignore his obvious barking and use of English, “Don’t step on me!”

Chidi likely never would step on Buster, crosses her mind, and if he did, it’d probably be an actual accident, and he’d be all sincere in apologising.

She’ll try to check her email before Saturday, but she’s not going to get all stupid over some boy who’ll probably head off to some big university once graduation rolls around.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes: For anyone who doesn't know, ISS is in-school suspension. It's basically an all-day long detention.


End file.
